Art therapy, 1993

In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

Lucky

I want to tell a story, before I get lost in the telling.

She does not see herself at the age of 43, wounded, in crash position on a black leather couch in the front room of a Victorian townhouse.  She does not see the gauze curtains that protect her from the curiosity of passersby, or the Klimt prints on the wall, or the gas fireplace that is never on.   She does not hear the howls of pain and rage, does not feel her own hand slap her face, over and over again, while a voice asks her to stop.  She does not yet know how lucky she is, because she cannot remember how unlucky she has been.

No one other than her much liked the dog.  He had a bit of a temper and he liked to pee on the basement carpet—damning traits in the eyes of the others.  But although he’d nipped her once on the face, she never told.  He was her best friend.

“You want to do this,” the witch whispered into her ear.  “His love is only for the worthy.”

But she did not want his love.  She wanted only for the old woman in the crinkly clothes  and who smelled so badly of lavender powder to let her go.  Let me go.

He always knew in which hand she held his ripped, tattered yellow ball with the nobbles, even when she held the ball behind her back.  It made her laugh.  She thought he was a genius.

“His name was Lucky,” she told him.  “Lucky the unlucky dog.”  Her boyfriend laughed, so she did too.  Because she was still only 19.  She would not be 43 for a long, long time.

Confusion, 1981

Diary entry, June 7, 2001

I chose to come here.

But the sadness

            the sadness...

It crackles.

No one told me, you know.

Heaven

Dream Journal, February 16-17, 2005

By the time I went to bed last night I was seriously starting to lose whatever good feelings I’d mustered up since Monday night.  Thoughts like I’m crazy, I make things up, I’d rather be dead than deal with all of this…that kind of stuff.

The dream I had I only remember a part of.  I was staying in a house—not permanently, I don’t think.  I don’t know if it was a relative or not.  A small group of people lived in the house, including one woman who, it turns out, was a demented serial killer.  I was sleeping on the couch in the living room but everyone else had a bedroom off of one main hallway—like my house growing up.  The people living in the house called the hallway Death Row because every so often someone would be murdered during the night, while they slept, in a very gory way, I think with a knife.  We all knew it was this one woman—she very proudly announced it, & seemed to take pleasure in our fear—but for some reason we didn’t seem to think we could stop her.  

She enjoyed the fact that we didn’t know what night she would strike.  At one point I looked in on her & saw her lying in bed with a smile on her face, like she was awake & knew we were scared.  She had threatened me, too, so I was terrified to go to sleep, as was one other woman who lived there (although she seemed to take it for granted that she just had to deal with this).  I was tired but doing all I could to stay awake.  I just wanted to make it through the night & get out of there, although it wasn’t clear if I could leave in the morning.  I just wanted to go back home.

I don’t really remember what happened after that.  I might have made it until morning, however.

The dream wasn’t a pleasant one, obviously.  I feel scared thinking about it.

Secrets